Toppling Goliath X Hops Pale Ale (Red)

The Toppling Goliath Brewing Company is in Decorah, Iowa. They make not only the best beer in Iowa, but some of the best in the entire nation. This is one of the first two releases in their new X Hop series. They will each have a unique color to their label, and each color represents a new experimental hop. They encourage people who try the X Hops beers to provide their input back to the brewery. They will then try to encourage hop growers to grow more of these new hops so as to have more regular production of some of these varieties. (See the Green here and Blue here and Yellow here and Orange here and Rainbow here).

The beer pours a cloudy apricot in color. There is about an inch of thick off-white head, with a bit of creaminess to it. The aroma is pungent and aromatic, full and round, tropical fruits, overripe melons, with some of that hop note that is, I guess, best described as musky. The taste follows the aromas, throwing in citrus, apricot/peach, some passion fruit, with a tingling, bitter, puckering finish like biting a grapefruit rind. Up until that biting finish however, it is full, round, smooth, a beer with an ample bosom shall we say. Like the green, it has varied and intense flavors, but in the end, they do meld together in a very harmonious (and delicious) whole. 

I find that Toppling Goliath's hop forward beers achieve what so many American pale ales and IPA's seek, but which so many fall short of, some by a hair, others by a mile. Nobody lets the aroma and taste of hops shine quite like TG. If you like hops, you will find that after drinking Toppling Goliath, your brain rewires itself, and you have a whole new level of understanding of just what hops can do. I digress, and I gush, and now I will enjoy the rest of this bottle...